


feathers & chrome

by orphean



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Forever Evil (Comics)
Genre: Disassociation, Extremely Dubious Consent, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, M/M, Panic Attacks, Possessive Behavior, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25444978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphean/pseuds/orphean
Summary: ‘He shouldn’t have hurt you. He shouldn’t hurt what doesn’t belong to him.’‘I don’t belong to you.’ Dick says and shudders at the way Owlman’s fingers wrap around his wrist. It hurts, sharp and harsh, and he bites his tongue to stop a whimper of pain.‘You don’t belong to them.’ Thomas says again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Dick’s statement.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Owlman, Dick Grayson/Thomas Wayne Jr., Dick Grayson/Thomas Wayne Jr. | Owlman
Comments: 7
Kudos: 127





	feathers & chrome

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started writing this after reading the first issue of _Forever Evil_ , then I read the rest of it and realised that it... does not work. So only the first issue (and only because I’ve pilfered a line of dialogue from it) could be considered canon for this, but familiarity with that run isn’t necessary.
> 
> A couple of **content warnings** /notes on tags. The “Extremely Dubious Consent” tag is probably far too generous – you can’t actually consent when you’re a prisoner, however much you tell yourself you can. However, nothing’s explicitly spelled out (hence the mature rating rather than explicit). I debated tagging this as Bruce/Dick but decided it would be misleading – Dick has some intrusive thoughts about Bruce, and he does not like it. This is all messed up, but then again, this _is_ Owlman we’re dealing with.

Dick is almost asleep when he hears the door open again. He raises his head, expecting Ultraman’s sneer. It’s not.

When the mask is removed, all he can see is Bruce’s face.

‘Ultraman said he got you in a bad way.’ Owlman says as he leaves his cowl on the small table and walks towards the bed. ‘Let me look at your wrist.’

He finds himself pressed up against the wall, backed into the corner of the bed. He cradles his wrist, aching and sore. Every time he looks up at him he has to glance away, the face too familiar, the expression not strange enough.

( _You’d think Owlman would stand up for him._ He remembers what Power Ring had said, and he remembers the sneer on his face.)

Owlman, his heavy cape spread across the bed, sits down and reaches out to touch Dick’s wrists.

‘My name is Thomas,’ he says, as though they were strangers needing to be introduced. ‘He shouldn’t have hurt you. He shouldn’t hurt what doesn’t belong to him.’

‘I don’t belong to you.’ Dick says and shudders at the way Owlman’s fingers wrap around his wrist. It hurts, sharp and harsh, and he bites his tongue to stop a whimper of pain.

‘You don’t belong to them.’ Thomas says again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Dick’s statement.

He is careful in his ministrations, splinting and wrapping the wrist with more finesse than any doctor Dick has ever met. (Except maybe Bruce, but Bruce is not a doctor.) He doesn’t speak as he runs his fingers over the bruises spread across his body, pressing down and grazing over, and Dick tries his best to keep his whines to himself.

‘Why?’ Dick asks as Thomas stands up and replaces the helmet.

‘Why what?’ Owlman asks, head cocked.

‘Why would you help me?’

‘I’m a doctor. And Ultraman should know better than to mess with things that aren’t his.’

It is all Bruce’s voice, Bruce’s cadence, Bruce’s calm. Everything but the content is perfect, and Dick is dizzy with the contradictions of it all.

‘I’m not a _thing_.’

‘No, Richard,’ he agrees, ‘you’re not.’

* * *

It’s days before he comes back. This time he arrives without the beaked helmet, his face all Bruce.

‘How’s the wrist?’ Thomas asks, the feathered cape at odds with his stern posture.

‘Healing,’ Dick replies and moves his fingers to show. He winces at the pain. He doesn’t know how badly broken it is, but the ache never stops.

‘It’ll heal soon enough.’

‘When will you let me go?’

Thomas sits at the table and studies Dick for long seconds before he replies. His face is passive and stern. The fact that he isn’t Bruce makes Dick feel sick.

‘We won’t. You’re insurance.’

‘Insurance for what?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘I think it is.’

‘And I think you should shut your whore mouth.’

Thomas doesn’t even raise his voice, but the words hit Dick like a slap. The accompanying backhand across his cheek barely registers. He doesn’t know when Thomas got close enough to touch him. He towers over where Dick sits on the bed, arms wrapped around his knees.

‘You will mind your manners, Richard.’

‘That’s not what anyone calls me.’ _Just call me Dick_ sits on his tongue, but he swallows it down. It feels too much like acquiescing.

‘It’s what _I_ call you.’ He clenches and unclenches his fists and works his jaw. Dick waits for him to hit him again.

But he doesn’t. He turns on his heel and leaves. Dick stares at the door when it slams shut.

* * *

The next time, he comes with food and wine. Bread, cheeses, grapes, delicate cuts of meat and candied nuts. A deep red varietal that Dick is certain he has seen Bruce drink before. A plate for Dick. Two glasses that the normally owl-coiffed man fills with a twist of his wrist. He sits at the small table in the centre of the cell and waits for Dick to join him. He’s not wearing his cowl.

‘How do I know you’re not going to poison me?’ Dick asks and looks at the food. It looks so much better than the slop he’d been fed. He is so hungry.

‘And what will I get out of that?’

Thomas sips his wine. He had opened the bottle in the cell. Dick knows that there are ways to poison a bottle even when it’s not open. It is possible the Wayne who isn’t Bruce has laced the food and wine with something for which he has built an immunity. It is the sort of thing Bruce would consider, Dick knows.

‘You all seem like a bunch of damn sadists. Maybe you’re just doing it for the fun. Maybe you just want me to suffer.’

He laughs at this, loud and bright and his eyes dead like nothing else.

‘Oh, Richard.’ Thomas sighs and cocks his head. Dick thinks of owls and his skin crawls. ‘What fun would I have with that? But if you don’t believe me, you can just eat that miserable pigwash they call food.’

‘If you care so much, why don’t you make it so that they feed me something better every day? Why this fucking picnic?’

‘Rewards aren’t useful if they’re not used sparingly.’

Thomas still looks at him with a curious gaze, the wrinkles around his eyes amused and questioning. He looks at Dick as though he’s an idiot, like there’s something _easy_ he isn’t getting.

‘What am I being rewarded for?’

It’s a bad idea, Dick knows, but he takes a sip of the wine. Rich, dry, the tannis far too pronounced for the wine to go with the food. He remembers Bruce teaching him about wine: how to hold it from the light to guess the age of the wine; how to track the legs along the walls of the glass after a vigorous swirl to assess the viscosity; how to match any wine with the right food. Dick can’t remember when he last had a drink. Dick isn’t sure how much he can drink before he gets drunk. He really, _really_ doesn’t want to be drunk around the Owlman.

Thomas Wayne has no such qualms and finishes his first glass, pouring himself another. He studies Dick over the rim, his gaze questioning. Dick wonders what the other Richard Grayson did to make him deserve such a gaze.

‘Eat.’

He doesn’t answer the question, but reaches across the table to grab a handful of almonds with an ungloved hand. The fingers that clasp the stem of the glass are clad in chrome, tips sharpened to an edge. His bare skin is – far too normal. Like any man’s.

Dick eats. He picks up the food with his fingers and shoves it into his mouth, eating fast as though Thomas will take it all away. There’s no cutlery and Dick’s fingers are sticky with cheese and salami fat. He can see the grooves of his fingerprints on the glass, each whorl and curl stark against the deep red of the wine. The wine’s tinged with orange at the edges, old and perfectly aged. Thomas is doing it a disservice by serving it with this food. (That’s what Bruce would say. And he’d say the shape of the wine glass was wrong – a Chardonnay bowl for a Cabernet wine. _The wine needs to breathe, Dick._ )

Thomas watches him over the rim of his glass, the wine swirling. Dick doesn’t look at him and eats well for the first time in – how long has he been here? The lights are always on, bright and static, and time stretches in ways Dick can’t quite recognise. It’s not like this is the first time he’s been kidnapped. But it’s never felt quite this long. It’s never felt this hopeless.

‘He’s going to get you, you know.’ Dick drinks his wine and bites his cheek when his glass is refilled.

‘ _Batman_?’ Thomas’ lips curl in a sneer that Dick recognises from the way Bruce talks about – talks about Riddler, Bane, Two-Face, Joker. ‘Batman is dead.’

(Dick’s stomach flips and he feels sick again, a pressing weight behind his ears and a flicker of nothing behind his eyes, and he can taste blood from where he bites his tongue.)

‘No, he’s not.’

Thomas exhales. Dick wants to say he’s less intimidating like this, human and fallible. But, at the same time: there is a different kind of danger to him like this, without the peacocking feathers and chrome of his cowl taking centre stage.

‘Little boys are allowed to believe all sorts of things that aren’t true.’ He shrugs and drinks his wine.

The silence stretches and Dick eats, waiting for him to rip it from his fingers, to hurt him, to do _something_. (Bruce cannot be dead. The oceans may evaporate and the sun may be obscured, but the Batman could never ever die.) The wine is gone the next time he speaks. Dick can’t remember how much Owlman has drunk. Dick can’t remember how much _he_ has drunk.

‘I am going to kiss you, Richard.’ Thomas says in a tone one might use when discussing the weather. It’s Bruce’s voice, clipped and confident, and Dick can’t breathe. ‘If you don’t open your mouth, I won’t do anything else. Is that understood?’

Dick nods, just barely.

‘Get up.’

Thomas is on his feet, holding his hand out. Almost as if he was wanting to hold Dick’s hand. But, no. There’s a part of Dick that is screaming at him to stay seated, to refuse to get up. (What would Owlman do then? Would he hit him again? Would he drag him from the chair by the hair? Just how mad would it make him?) But there’s the part that is Robin, the part that is forever loyal to Bruce, that can’t resist that voice. Even though he knows it’s not Bruce, even though he _knows_ this, he obeys.

In an instant, Thomas has him up against the wall by the throat. His ungloved hand is pressed against his jaw, and Dick gasps for breath when he lets up the pressure. Thomas watches him with a gaze that borders on disinterest. He presses Dick’s bound hands against his chest with a cold glove.

‘Will you behave?’ He asks, as though _Dick_ was the beast.

Dick nods again, mouth firmly shut.

‘Good boy, Richard.’ Thomas breathes the words against his lips, and sneers at his shudder.

Then he kisses him. Slow, careful, his lips dry and unwelcoming. The nip of teeth, a quiet inhale that is cold against Dick’s skin. He smells of wine and sweat and the harsh chemicals of metal polish. He kisses him like he knows him. His thigh pressed between Dick’s legs and his hand curled around his throat, he kisses him like he’s deserving. Like Dick’s deserving.

Dick opens his mouth.

* * *

Sometimes he is cruel. Sometimes he is kind. Sometimes his fingers wrap around Dick’s throat and he cannot breathe. Sometimes his fingers are soft against his neck and Dick buries his face in the feathers of his collar and he buries his whimpers in the leather of his shoulder. Sometimes he kneels in front of Dick, his shackles affixed to the end of the bed where he’s sprawled on the floor, where the downy cape is spread across the concrete. Sometimes the back of his hand burns across his cheek. Sometimes it’s his lips. Both hurt just as much.

Every time he says he’ll stop if Dick asks him to. If Richard asks him to stop.

Dick never says anything at all.

* * *

The rest of the syndicate doesn’t care about him. Ultraman stays away. Superwoman stays away. Power Ring and his twisted ruined limb stays away. Everyone stays away.

‘We all have our toys,’ Owlman says and Dick is so tired, so worn down, so weak. He can’t fight, not to that voice, not to that tone.

He squeezes his eyes shut and feels feathery-soft kisses across his face, across his forehead, across his jaw. Unmanicured fingers stroke his hair, grown long in captivity.

He smells nothing like Bruce. That makes it easier. That makes it harder.

* * *

The day he’s saved is like any other. The door creaks open and Dick knows who it is. He knows the tread of those boots, the rubber against concrete. He doesn’t need to acknowledge Thomas. Half of the time he doesn’t care. The other half of the time – well, the fury at being ignored is at least an emotion. It’s easy; it’s fine; it’s okay. He stays where he is, forearm splayed across his eyes. He’s tired. The lights are so bright and he’s not slept and it’s not like Thomas cares.

(Sometimes Dick thinks that Thomas cares, and Thomas cares very _very_ much. More than – more than anyone with Bruce’s voice should care. Dick doesn’t like those thoughts.)

‘Dick?’

A voice that demands an answer, attention. He lifts his arm and grimaces against the brightness.

Black suit, sleek cape, two pointed ears that perfectly straddle the ridiculous and terrifying.

Dick moves, more instinct than intention, pressing himself against the back of the wall as though that would keep him safe, as though that is somewhere Thomas can’t get to him. He digs his palms against his thighs to keep himself grounded and his healing wrist, the shattered bones barely healed, screams in pain.

It’s a joke. It’s not _funny_.

‘ _Dick_. You’re safe.’

The sprawl of the cape when he steps closer to the bed. The kevlar smell of his gauntlets when he pushes back his cowl.

The eyes – the face – the down-turned corners of the lip – the furrowed brow of Bruce Wayne. Of Batman, alive and battered. Of Batman, _alive_.

He reaches with his fingers for Dick’s shackles, the heavy metal that he’s – that he’s used to by now. Dick can’t get further away, he can’t dig his shoulder blades further against the rungs of the bed’s metal frame. (He’s tried, before. Thomas always chuckled and smiled and stroked his cheek and told him to be calm. To be good.)

He can take a lot. He can take whatever the world throws at him. But this is cruel. _This_ is cruel.

‘Dick, I–’

Hesitation – and that’s not like Thomas, not like the man who has a riposte or backhand to every situation. That was like – no, it isn’t like Bruce either. It isn’t like Bruce at all.

The man in the suit, his cape draped across the bed, sits and waits with his hand outstretched, not touching.

Dick keeps his eyes fixed in the distance, to the back wall, to – to the doorway where the door stayed open. The door that never stays open. Dick had tried, in the early days, for days and days to break the encryption, and Thomas had smiled like a schoolmaster at a truant child and punished him for his disobedience.

The open doorway where Diana stands, gold and red and blue, her face sharp and then softening, worrying.

 _Diana_.

He looks at the man in the suit, the man who _has_ to be Thomas, the man who couldn’t be Bruce. The man who looks at him like a father looks at a son. (The man who shouldn’t look like him like that, not if he knew, who will never look at him like that if he finds out.)

‘We beat them, Dick. You’re safe. I’m so sorry we took so long.’ Bruce doesn’t sound like Thomas, not at all, his voice light and uncertain, his fingers reached out into nothing, not daring to touch.

(Thomas, who always dared to touch.)

* * *

‘Dick, what happened?’

‘I wish people would stop asking me that.’

Dick digs his fingernails into his palms, the nails too short to even make a mark. Still, Clark reaches out and pries his fingers from their grip, folding them in his own hands.

‘We can’t help you if you won’t talk to us.’

‘Maybe I don’t want you to help me.’ He can hear the bitterness in his voice. He knows he is wrong in pushing away this help, that he should accept it, but his mind feels like a chasm and every little light in his life is too bright. He wishes he could feel something.

‘Please, Dick.’ Clark runs the pads of his thumbs over his knuckles. ‘Bruce is worried about you. We’re all worried about you.’

( _Bruce is worried about you._ The words echo in Dick’s head. It had been days and still the idea of being alone with Bruce turns his stomach: the fear that Bruce would find out what he had done; what he had allowed to be done to him. Bruce has no reason to be worried about him.)

‘What did he do to you?’ Clark looks at him with Superman eyes, warm and open and too too kind.

‘He didn’t do anything.’ Dick stares past him, fixing his gaze on the bookshelf behind him. He tries to read the titles on the spine, but the room is dark almost and the print is too fine. He tries to remember the last time he touched any of them. He tries to remember the last time he was in this room. He can’t.

‘I don’t think you’re telling me the truth, Dick.’ Clark tilts his head, putting his face in front of Dick again. He twists his head away, eyes fixed on the peeling paint of the window grilles. ‘Is there someone else you would rather talk to?’

Clark’s hands are dry and warm, reassuring in a way that makes Dick’s body itch.

‘No.’

‘Will you talk to me, then?’

Dick swallows. He screws his eyes shut and covers his face with his hands. He digs the heels of his palms against his eyelids, lets the world screech in red and yellow. It almost feels like peace.

‘He didn’t do anything.’ Dick says again, and he swallows once, twice, three times, before he is able to continue. ‘He didn’t do anything I didn’t let him do.’

Superman doesn’t need to breathe. Dick knows this. And yet, there it is: a slow, light exhale. There is such sadness in that unneeded breath. Dick wants to cry.

‘He hurt you.’

‘He didn’t hurt me.’ The answer is too quick, his voice too raw. ‘He didn’t hurt me like you think he did.’

‘Why are you defending him?’

Clark’s fingers are gentle against his face, lifting his hands away, holding them in the barest grip. Clark touches him like he’s fragile, like the wrong touch could break him. With Kryptonian strength, he can. (Dick remembers Ultraman, his sneer tinged with red, his fingers crushing bone without effort.)

‘I’m not defending him. You asked me to talk, I’m talking. I’ll stop if you don’t want me to.’

(And Thomas had said that, too. _I’ll stop if you don’t want this_ , he said. But Dick had wanted it, though he shouldn’t, though it was wrong, though there was no reason he should want it. Thomas hadn’t stopped. And he had wanted it. The words run through his mind like a mantra.)

He blinks. He knows there are tears on his face but he feels nothing at all.

‘I want you to leave me alone.’ Dick looks away again. Clark opens his mouth. ‘Please.’

Clark is slow in leaving. He doesn’t say anything, and the brush of his hand over Dick’s shoulder barely registers. Before he leaves, he turns on the Tiffany lamp by the bed. The coloured glass dapples the room. Dick knows he is home, but he has never felt so far away. He slams his fist against the wall and bites down a scream.

* * *

It gets easier. Or – he thinks, at first, it is getting easier. He can be in the same room as Bruce now without feeling the panic in the base of his skull, without feeling Bruce’s gaze on him like a brand. He leaves his room and sits at the dinner table. He watches Tim and Damian jostle and laugh at – not with – each other. He tries a smile when they look at him, but it comes out all wrong. Not for the first time, Damian opens his mouth – and Tim pinches his arm, hard and obvious. Dick doesn’t say anything. Bruce doesn’t say anything.

He goes to the gymnasium. He can be alone there. Dick spends hours alone, rediscovering a balance in his body that he thought was lost. He breathes and spins and jumps. He falls. He twists his ankle and limps through the pain. Tim asks him – at breakfast or at dinner or whenever they pass each other in the hallways – how he’s doing. He says he’s fine. He says his training’s going well. Slowly, slowly, his body grows strong again.

He decides he can put on the mask again.

* * *

It’s late afternoon when he walks down to the cave, his bare feet quiet against the old floorboards. In the split second before the entrance unveils itself, Dick is certain that Bruce has decided to deny him this, has decided that he is too unwell to be who he is. But the door opens and he walks down the stairs.

He stands in front of the costume for what feels like hours. It’s clean and pressed. Dick looks at it in the glass case and thinks it must be new. Bruce must have made a new suit for him. He presses his palm against the lock, his fingerprints against the print reader, and it creaks open. He inhales and gets undressed.

The last time he wore this – not _this_ – suit he was beaten, hurt, taken. He squeezes his eyes shut and reminds himself that’s not what’s happening, that’s not what _will_ happen this time.

He keeps his mask off as he trains. He waits for night to fall. He trains. He barely hears Bruce and Tim come down the stairs, finishing his repetitions with the focused care that Bruce has always expected of him. Tim changes into his suit at once, combing his fingers through his hair before affixing the domino mask. Bruce spends several minutes at his desk, sifting through data with practised precision. Dick breathes and doesn’t look at him. He approaches the suits again. Tim pats his shoulder and smiles at him. (He always smiles too bright.)

‘Are you finally coming with us tonight?’ Bruce asks the question without even looking at him. He decides which suit he’s wearing tonight – one of the lighter designs, created for surveillance and stealth, not for fighting – and begins to strip. It’s all part of the procedure, the way he shrugs out of his starched shirt and the way he undoes his belt at the same time as he releases the first clasp of his suit. Dick has seen it all before, all hard muscles and a jagged mess of scars on pale skin.

(He never saw Thomas’ skin. He saw his hands and he saw his face and he saw the flush of arousal on his neck and that was all he ever saw.)

All at once, Dick can’t breathe. He gasps for air as he backs away, as he finds something to perch on. He tries to catch his breath but he’s not sure how. Tim is there in an instant, helping him sit down on the cold floor of the cave, rubbing his back and talking to him.

‘Dick, will you breathe for me? Can you do that for me, please? Slow breaths, slower than that. Come on, come on, breathe with me.’

Tim’s fingers are warm against Dick’s neck and Dick tips his forehead against his shoulder and he can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed about this awkward half-hug they’ve ended up in. He blinks away the tears and tries to copy Tim’s breaths. It’s far too long before he can breathe on his own again.

‘You’re not coming out tonight.’

Bruce is almost fully dressed now, only the cowl missing. Dick can’t tell if his gaze is hard or sad. His voice is flat. If Dick squints, he can almost superimpose a costume of feathers and chrome over the suit. He closes his eyes instead.

‘No.’

He allows Tim to take him back upstairs.

* * *

It takes weeks, but he learns to quell the panic. Nightwing goes out on patrol with Batman and Robin. Nightwing goes out on patrol with Batman and Red Robin. He plays his part. He beats the bad guys. He doesn’t cry, and he bites back the bile when Bruce’s fingers brush against him.

Maybe he can still feel his heart in his throat when Bruce smiles under the mask. Maybe he can see Clark’s eyes narrow when he visits, when he looks at him and Dick’s pulse thunders as he sees Bruce frown. It’s only physical.

He is fine.

* * *

It’s been months, and Dick spends most of his time in the cave these days.

‘Dick.’

Dick freezes where he’s standing, turning his head slightly to look back at Bruce, back from patrol. His cowl off, his hair matted with sweat, his suit a powdery black. He looks nothing like Thomas. Bruce runs a hand through his hair.

‘Are you okay?’ He hesitates for only a moment before continuing: ‘Are _we_ okay?’

Bruce looks at him, worried and longing. Dick meets his gaze, and he thinks of Thomas’ hands, of Thomas’ mouth. He wonders how Bruce feels. He wonders if he will ever be able to stop wondering. God, he wants to stop wondering.

‘Yeah.’ He smiles, soft and small. ‘We’re good.’

He lies.


End file.
